South Korea and Japan will hold a joint meeting of their senior diplomats and defense officials this week to discuss policy cooperation, the foreign ministry here said Wednesday.

The director-level “two-plus-two” policy consultation meeting will bring together Kim Yong-kil, director-general for Northeast Asian affairs and Park Chul-kyun, deputy director general for international policy at the defense ministry along with Kenji Kanasugi, director-general of Asian and Oceanian affairs, and Japanese defense ministry official Shuji Yuge, in Tokyo on Thursday.

The meeting is the first such two-plus-two meeting between the neighbors since the 10th round session held in April 2015, the ministry said.

The two sides will share views on the security situation of Northeast Asia, cooperation on defense and security policies and other issues of mutual interest, according to the ministry.

The joint consultation was launched in 1998 after an agreement between the two countries‘ foreign ministers a year earlier. (Yonhap)